Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium

Hume's Pathology of Philosophy

Donald W. Livingston

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226487175, 9780226487168
• eBook ISBN: 9780226519210
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: World History

The Scottish philosopher David Hume is commonly understood as the original proponent of the "end of philosophy." In this powerful new study, Donald Livingston completely revises our understanding of Hume's thought through his investigation of Hume's distinction between "true" and "false" philosophy. For Hume, false philosophy leads either to melancholy over the groundlessness of common opinion or delirium over transcending it, while true philosophy leads to wisdom. Livingston traces this distinction through all of Hume's writings, providing a systematic pathology of the corrupt philosophical consciousness in history, politics, philosophy, and literature that characterized Hume's own time as well as ours.

By demonstrating how a philosophical method can be used to expose the political motivations behind intellectual positions, historical events, and their subsequent interpretations, Livingston revitalizes Hume's thought and reveals its relevance for contemporary dicussions of politics, nationalism, and ideology for the first time.

PART ONE

HUMEAN REFLECTIONS

CHAPTER ONE

Is Hume an Empiricist?

Modern philosophy has been obsessed with epistemology. In surveys of the history of philosophy, it is common to find philosophies identified by epistemological descriptions (empiricist, rationalist, idealist, pragmatist, etc.) as if these descriptions captured their essence. But a philosophy is and must be more than its epistemology. One can always ask what is the value of knowledge, and how it is to be ranked in the wider order of valuable things. This is not an epistemological question, and presupposed in every theory of knowledge, whether recognized or not, is some view of the worth of knowledge and its rank in the order of value. No philosopher has suffered more from the narrowing of vision that comes from the modern habit of epistemological classification than Hume. He is commonly identified as an empiricist and indeed as an especially clear case of what radical empiricism is.

Empiricism as Ideology

But what is empiricism? If we mean the doctrine that all knowledge originates from experience and that nothing is in the intellect that was not first in sense, then Hume is an empiricist. But so are Aristotle, Aquinas, and other philosophers too numerous to mention. If we narrow the definition to mean the doctrine that all knowledge claims are either analytic or synthetic and that all necessary propositions fall in the former class and all scientific propositions fall in the latter, then Hume is not an empiricist because he did not think that necessary propositions are analytic. That is, he did not think that what makes a proposition necessary is that its denial is formally self-contradictory. Indeed, he held a doctrine similar to Kant’s that, in addition to analytic propositions, there are propositions which have both empirical content and are necessary.¹ One could go on perhaps indefinitely proposing definitions of empiricism and testing to see whether Hume’s philosophy is a counterexample. But this would be a fruitless and even misleading task, because what is at issue in classifying Hume as a radical empiricist is something ideological. Epistemologies are internally connected to a wider view of the whole of experience, including a judgment about the worth of knowledge. The epistemology can, of course, be abstracted from this wider context, but then it loses its life and collapses into an abstraction. Since there are no “radical” abstractions, to think of Hume as a radical empiricist is to think of him as, in some way, participating in a certain sort of ideology either as a hero or villain. What ideology could that be?

It will be helpful to begin with the origin of the word empiricism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term appears in English around the middle of the seventeenth century and denotes a medical quack who, without scientific knowledge, practices by trial and error. It was largely a term of abuse throughout the eighteenth century. Any science or art could be “debased with empiricism,” and an absurd policy in government could be described as “the most sorry juggle of political empiricism.” James Mill can say in 1817 that “mere observation and empiricism” are “not even the commencement of science.” It is not until the end of the nineteenth century that the term empiricism begins to take on the favorable connotations it has today, as when Thomas Huxley says in 1881 that “all true science begins with empiricism.” It is the favorable connotations of this essentially Victorian term that are now read back into the history of philosophy to pick out a line of heroes or villains: Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Carnap, Ayer, and so on. If Hume was an empiricist, he could not have known that he was, since the favorable connotations of the term were not available to him.

It is true that Locke, Berkeley, and Hume take a position on the epistemological debates of their time that contrasts with that taken by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. We may call this empiricism if we like, but we must be careful to purge the term of its latter-day ideological connotations—something especially difficult to do in the case of Hume. And we must also take care to show how a common “empiricism” is internal to the natural-law Stoicism of Locke, the Christian Platonism of Berkeley, and the Ciceronian humanism of Hume. Such a generic empiricism contains none of the substantial content and bite usually associated with talk of “Hume’s empiricism.”

Epistemological theories, I have suggested, move against a deep background of beliefs about the worth of knowledge in a wider scheme of things. As such, epistemologies have an ideological and rhetorical dimension, and may be viewed as speeches embedded in a culture and addressed to that culture. The true home of empiricism is the late nineteenth century and our own time, where it is a theory of knowledge at the service of an ideology of perpetual progress through science, technology, and democracy. It is a militant ideology, resolutely forward-looking and hostile not only to religious tradition but to all traditions. The faint image of this ideology of progress can be found in the theory of history as inevitable progress sketched out by Turgot, Condorcet, and Kant; it appears boldly in the superstitious scientism of Comte’s positivism; it is found in Bentham, Mill, Thomas Huxley, the manifesto of the Vienna Circle, logical positivism, logical empiricism, and various forms of pragmatism. A. J. Ayer records, in his account of the Vienna Circle, that the positivists found little in the history of philosophy with which to identify and that the two thinkers closest to their own views were Hume and Mach.²

Empiricism with its background ideology of progress is very much a speech rooted in the industrial revolution, which provided capital and a vast array of machinery and managerial technology for projects of social transformation. By 1825 the fixed steam engines of Britain were producing the equivalent of the labor of 5,400,000 men. These engines alone represented a capital value of about ten million pounds sterling. A century earlier, when Hume was a university student, the total value of all fixed capital in Britain was around two million pounds. By 1900 the work done by the steam engines of the world equaled the labor of five billion men, more than the entire population of the earth.³ Watt and Boulton sold their first steam engines in 1775, a year before Hume’s death.

The great transformation of the meanings of men and things brought on by the industrial revolution, and in which empiricism finds its natural home, makes no appearance in Hume’s philosophy. The controlling images and metaphors of that philosophy derive from societies of family, kinship, and friends rooted in an agrarian order which cultivated commerce and the sort of light manufacturing that was largely under the control of landed gentry. The technology of production had changed little in five thousand years. Nearly everything was made by hand. The sources of power were what they had always been: wind, water, the strength of animals, and above all, human labor. Thoughts of famine and the decline of the national population were always in the background. Hume thought there were physical limits in the nature of human arrangements that prevented the population of a city from growing much beyond six hundred thousand (E, 447–48). Almost everywhere, combinations of princes and priests ruled as they had always done. Hume’s philosophy encouraged “improvement” and “reform” but was radically ignorant of the industrial notion of a “progressive” society. And its “improvements” were always proposed with an eye first on the stability of society and the hierarchical orders of family, kinship, and the traditional establishment that held them together. It does not teach—because it can scarcely conceive—deliberate projects of total social transformation which are standard in the ideologies of industrial society; it has no notion of the ceaseless destruction and creation that is known today as progress. It is not a philosophy such as liberalism or Marxism that is forward-looking or that looks impatiently at the present from the perspective of a future that it thinks it knows and, in thought, has already occupied. When the theory of history as inevitable progress first made its appearance in the speculations of his friend Turgot, Hume firmly rejected it (L, 2: 180). The present is not a disposable launching pad for future adventures in technological progress but a place to dwell, to understand, and to enjoy, and something to pass on with whatever improvements are desirable to one’s posterity. The present is understood to be what it is because of the past, because of traditions and customs built into it. And the greatest wisdom is not what an individual following a rational “method” can discern but the knowledge spontaneously collected by many generations, often working in ignorance of each other, and deposited in traditions, customs, and conventions. It is a philosophy whose favorite way of understanding something is to tell a story about its origins.

Its view of the human world is not technological but poetic. Hume teaches that in a world of constant flux and dissolution, the metaphorical imagination forms identities which are housed in habits, customs, and traditions, and which are its only means of resisting the horror of dissolution. Hence the Humean imagination, although it encourages improvement and even radical change when necessary, betrays a prejudice on behalf of what is familiar and long-established just because it is so. Time is a value immanent in human institutions. But because of this prejudice on behalf of the familiar, boredom may set in, or a custom may outlive its utility. And so novelty is valued as a welcome relief, but only as an enrichment of the deeper and wider background of the familiar. The ceaseless pursuit of novelty and creativity for their own sakes makes no appearance in Hume’s thought.

The tone, tenor, and style of Hume’s philosophy are therefore entirely different from those of empiricism, which is the tip of the ideological iceberg of progress. Here, in philosophy as elsewhere, style and nuance are of the essence. Given the present and backward-looking character of Hume’s philosophy and the importance he gives to custom, one might think of it as an historical empiricism. This is a better identification, because Hume’s conception of experience has more affinity with the notion of historical experience as understood by the English Common Law tradition and the Latin rhetorical tradition in philosophy, as exemplified by Cicero, than with an empiricism which views sense experience as the ahistorical foundation against which scientific theories are tested. But though it is an improvement to think of Hume as a historical empiricist, such violence is done to the conventions governing the use of the term empiricism that this phrase is either misleading or paradoxical. To describe Hume as a historical empiricist is rather like describing Hegel’s philosophy as historical Aristotelianism. There is a point to such a description, but there must be a better way to think about Hegel’s philosophy, and Hume’s. The solution is to resist the prejudice of epistemological classification and to look for a broader topic under which to understand Hume’s thought.

The “Sceptical System” of Philosophy

I suggest going back to Hume’s own description of his philosophy in the Treatise. He called it simply the “sceptical” philosophy (T, 180). The exploration of what Hume understood this philosophy to be is the task of this study. But we can make a beginning by sketching out the rationale of Pyrrhonian skepticism. As will be shown later, Hume’s philosophy is different from Pyrrhonism, but it owes much to the dialectic of philosophical reflection first exposed by the Pyrrhonians, and it is with this dialectic that I would like to begin.

The ancient philosophical sects of Platonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism, Cynicism, and the Peripatetic philosophy conceived of philosophy as the search for wisdom or the best way to live. Each had a theory of what constitutes human happiness and also a theory of the source of human unhappiness. For the Platonist, the source of human misery is philosophical ignorance, which is overcome by philosophical knowledge; for the Epicurean, it is pain, which is overcome by maximizing pleasure; for the Stoic, it is a false will, which is overcome by a will in accord with nature or right reason; for the Cynic, it is the tyranny of convention, which is overcome by an ascetic independence. But the skeptics had an especially interesting theory of the source of human misery; they found it not in philosophical ignorance, pain, a false will, or the grip of convention but in philosophical theorizing itself. An act of philosophical theorizing could be overcome only by another act of philosophical reflection which subverted both the first and itself, and so opened the way for a life free of philosophical reflection and guided entirely by the fourfold practical criterion: natural inclination, instinct, the piety of custom, and the practical arts. Sextus Empiricus tells a story of how the skeptics came to discover that the good life is a life free of the oppressions of philosophical reflection.⁴

The skeptics began as philosophers who were determined to live by the dictates of philosophical theory, no matter what those dictates were. Their happiness depended entirely on possessing the correct theory of nature and of the good life. But they soon discovered that for every theory of reality supported by philosophical reasons, they could find a contrary theory equally well supported, and so they were forced to suspend judgment. This led to depression. For being committed to the philosophical life, their happiness depended entirely on philosophical reason, which was leading nowhere. While in the melancholy state of suspending philosophical judgment, they noticed for the first time the radiant world of unreflectively received common life. Here was society, family, friends, the pleasures of the table, the glory of one’s city, festive companionship with the gods, the ingenious working of a grist mill, and much else. One could delight in all of these things without the mediation of philosophical theory, without having to answer questions about their ultimate origins, nature, or meaning. Philosophers could say that these things are appearances and wonder about their relation to ultimate reality, but their being appearances would not affect our enjoyment of them. Even if the sweetness of honey were an appearance, that would not affect our enjoyment of it, nor its price in the market, nor the value placed on beekeepers. Of course, in the mode of suspending philosophical judgment, one cannot say that the things of unreflectively received common life are appearances. They might be, but then again they might not. The philosophical distinction between appearance and reality vanishes in the mode of suspending philosophical judgment, and the world of common life can appear in its full radiance, untainted by philosophical reflection. It is in this philosophically unreflective order of common life that the skeptics realize they have enjoyed whatever happiness they have known, and it is in this mode of existence that they are determined to stay. But there is an essential tension within Pyrrhonism which makes the achievement of happiness in philosophically unreflective common life difficult. The Pyrrhonians divided all philosophers into three types: the dogmatists who claim to have discovered ultimate truth, the academics who claim that knowledge of ultimate truth is impossible, and the Pyrrhonians who, not making a dogmatic claim one way or the other, continue the search for ultimate truth. Skeptikos means an inquirer. The Pyrrhonians acknowledge that they have no argument capable of showing that philosophical truth about ultimate reality is impossible. But without such a demonstration, the Pyrrhonian is vulnerable to every new philosophical sect that may come along. The new theory could be true, and so the Pyrrhonian is forced out of the peace and self-imposed innocence of common life into the anxieties of philosophical reflection. The old philosophical desire to grasp the real reappears and continues until suspense of judgment and peace of mind are again achieved through argument. The method of Pyrrhonian wisdom is to become proficient at thinking up such arguments so that one will be disturbed as little as possible by the intrusion of new philosophical theory. Since the skeptic can never entirely suppress the desire to philosophize, his happiness is never complete and always exists against a background of philosophical anxiety.

In a sense, the Pyrrhonians were the deepest of the eudaemonistic sects because they were the most philosophically self-aware. Like the other sects, they thought the task of philosophical reflection was to secure happiness and personal well-being. But unlike the other sects, the happiness they discovered required the subversion of philosophical reflection by itself. In undertaking this, the Pyrrhonians threw into question not merely this or that philosophical theory of the good life but the value of philosophical theorizing itself. They thought themselves the most critically reflective of the ancient philosophers, for they could see, whereas the others apparently could not, that philosophical theories contrary to their own were equally well supported by argument. A philosophy that radically questions the nature and value of its own activity is more self-aware than one that does not. In this sense, the Pyrrhonians were the most philosophical of the ancient philosophers. They were not Philistines who opposed custom and the natural inclination to philosophical reflection but, as Sextus Empiricus described them, men of noble nature who, through rigorous philosophical reflection, discovered to their astonishment that philosophical reflection itself was entirely empty.

It should be stressed that the Pyrrhonian questioning of philosophy is itself a philosophical act. Likewise, the insight into the emptiness of philosophical theorizing, the discovery of the domain of common life as the scene for happiness, the recognition of the necessity of the practical criterion (instinct, natural inclination, piety, and the practical arts) as the appropriate guides for living in this d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Part One: Humean Reflections
• Part Two: Humean Intimations
• Notes
• Index